Page:Leah Reed--Brenda's summer at Rockley.djvu/380

358 are lost. Have you heard from the happy couple? No one sent a word to the woods of Maine, and I don’t like  to feel that the wedding deprived me wholly of my only  brother.”

“Oh, we ’ve had letters!” responded Brenda, “and two have been forwarded here for you. I wondered why, for I did n’t know that you were coming back this way.”

“As if I could pass within a hundred miles of Rockley without coming to see you!”

Brenda looked at the young man out of the corner of her eye. She wondered if he were in earnest. But she did not wish him to know that she wondered.

“No, indeed!” he continued. “I wanted to see you all, and I had the Portland express stop at Salem, expressly.”

Julia gave a merry laugh.

“I was trying, Brenda, to see which of us ought to take all these compliments to heart. But a man who can make puns is n’t to be taken in earnest.”

“Ah, well!” and Arthur sighed heavily. “I cannot see why some one is always doubting me. Here I ’ve driven you the most roundabout road to the house, thinking that you would thus have the chance to pay me at  least one compliment, and not one have I had, except  those that I ’ve paid myself.”

“You ’re looking rather sunburned,” said Julia.

“That’s what your aunt said, when I saw her at the house.”

“Oh, you ’ve been at the house?”